Has this scenario ever happened to you? You wake up, you press the snooze button on your alarm clock, then go back to sleep. Then, you hear your alarm clock again, only to press the snooze button and go back to sleep again. You do this repeatedly until you finally get out of bed. For a sizable amount of individuals, this is an almost daily occurrence. However, for some people, there exists a phenomenon that is a distinct contrast to the common one.
Before the Alarm Rings
Some people wake up before their alarm clock sets off. They hardly ever have to hit the snooze button more than once. Why is this? As you probably already know, waking up before your alarm can be attributed to your circadian rhythm. In layman’s terms, this is your own internal biological clock. This is genetic. Explained simply, a gene called the KDM5A gene encodes a protein called JARID1a. The latter activates the biochemical circuit of another protein called PERIOD. This is how your sleep-wake cycle is regulated.
Your circadian rhythm can be trained. If you sleep at the same time every night, and wake up at the same time every day, then the proteins in your body will be trained to rise and fall based on the rhythm you set. Similar to how memory makes information more attainable, this training makes your body more efficient at sleeping and waking up.
Throughout millions of years of our evolutionary history, the ancestors of humans never woke up to an abrupt, unnatural sound. These primates woke up when the sun came up. Therefore, a disruption of sleep caused by a source that is not from nature induces stress to the body. It’s less startling for the body to wake itself up. Thus, your circadian rhythm signals your body to wake up before your alarm clock.
Sleeping Cycle of the Third Kind
That said, there seems to be yet another sleep pattern that occurs. This, which is apparently drastically less common than the aforementioned two, is the pattern in which you wake up a considerable amount of time before your alarm clock no matter the time it is set. For example, if your alarm clock is set at, say, 7:00 AM, you wake up at around 5:00 AM. If it is set at 9:30 AM, you wake up at 7:30 AM. If it is set at 12:00 PM you wake up at 10:00 AM.
Anecdotally, I’ve known only myself and a few others to experience this sort of sleeping pattern, hence why I say this sleep pattern is very seldomly experienced. So understandably, there are a grave lack of studies that pertain to this nuance of this topic. Because of this, I’ll come up with my own hypothesis on why this occurs.
Societal Structure
Starting from the day you set foot in preschool or kindergarten, you are expected to diligently get up at a specific time for most days of your life. If you arrive at school late more than once, you are met with a consequence, namely detention. This is functional for the school system. Imagine if kids got to choose when they would come to school. Obviously, there would be no order. Since the industrial age, part of educating children was preparing them to enter the workforce, which also has time standards that must be met.
From elementary school to high school, and from college to work, this trend of honoring time-related criteria continues. The majority of people that support themselves perpetually live strictly by the clock, everyday, from the time the sun rises to the time the sun sets. This long-lasting routine takes a toll on both the body and mind.
Psychological Impact
To reiterate, why is it possible for someone to wake up hours before their alarm rings? Since the physiology of sleep patterns have already been discussed, I’ll delve into how the human mind can be affected by this modern system. Remember that this strange sleep pattern is experienced by very few people, hence the word ‘can.’
To a substantial degree, the power of the mind is underestimated. Nonetheless, it has been proven to be able to affect the body, mainly through placebo effects. An exceedingly well-known example of this is the instance in which an individual consumes a sugar pill, thinking that said pill is actual medicine, and unknowingly alleviates his or her pain through mentality alone.
That said, it’s possible that the same basic principle could apply to sleep. If someone faces the dilemma of waking up hours prior to their alarm rings, then it’s reasonable to first suspect that they are anxious. This could be a contributing factor to this dilemma. Being distressed elevates adrenaline. If not properly utilized, then the energy that comes from adrenaline can cause restlessness during the night.
Subconscious Training
On the contrary, what about days in which you are not particularly stressed? Let’s assume that you don’t have insomnia, your thyroid function is normal, and that you are not too warm (the ideal temperature for sleep is under 70°F or 21.1°C). On such days, or any day for that matter, you wake up earlier than planned simply because your mind is engineered to vehemently ensure that you won’t be late to your destination.
Although this is only an educated guess, this proposal should seem reasonable if you subscribe to the iceberg metaphor. For those of you who are unaware of the id, ego, and superego, I’ll provide a brief overview of these psyche components. The id is our primal, animalistic drives. Conversely, the superego is the internalization of societal rules. The ego is essentially the tug-of-war between the id and superego. It’s the part of the personality structure for which humans base their respective identities.
So, what does this have to do with sleep? Well, it’s possible that part of the unconscious superego is cultivated to an unusual extent. Remember that the superego contains the expectations of one’s society. For certain occasions, being late can get one in trouble. As previously stated, our society is geared towards being places at certain times and meeting deadlines. For comparison, most non-human animals, particularly the ones that are less socially and cognitively sophisticated, lack a superego all together. This is partly why they don’t experience any sleeping problems, unlike many humans.
Solution
How should you get around this issue? Simple; compensate by setting your alarm clock to a later time. If you know that you need to be up at 9:00 AM every weekday, then set your alarm to 11:00 AM. As a warning, make sure you will actually be able to sleep through the night. If you are unable to sleep for half the night, then you likely won’t actually wake up until 11:00 AM. Sleep in a cool (or even cold), dark room. Put your phone at least five feet away from you. And concentrate on keeping your body still. These actions will make sleeping noticeably easier.
